From Adam and Eve to chemsex: 80 great quotes about love and romance

LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS, known as Bosie, was a lover of Oscar Wilde. When Wilde was asked in his 1895 trial for “gross indecency” whether the phrase in Douglas's poem Two Loves referred to the "unnatural love" of homosexuals, Wilde denied it and said the phrase referred to a Platonic affection of an elder for a younger man. Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labour in prison.

Times have moved on. Gore Vidal said he thought that "actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them" – a message extolled in the 2005 Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain (above, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as cowboys in Wyoming who have an affair), which is set from 1963-1983. During that time period in the UK, sex between men was decriminalised. In March 2014, gay marriage laws finally came into effect in Britain.